"I didn't mean you to read that!"
She snatched the paper from Jan's hand and threw it into the fire.
Jan's blood filled with pleasure, and at the bottom of his next letter
he wrote back:
"I think you have beautiful hair. I love it."
That winter Jan was appointed post hunter, and this gave him much time
at home, for meat was plentiful along the edge of the barrens. The two
continued at their books until they came to the end of what Jan knew
in them. After that, like searchers in strange places, they felt their
way onward, slowly and with caution. During the next summer they
labored through all the books which were in the little box in the
corner of the cabin.
It was Melisse who now played most on the violin, and Jan listened,
his eyes glowing proudly as he saw how cleverly her little fingers
danced over the strings, his face flushed with a joy that was growing
stronger in him every day. One day she looked curiously into the F-
hole of the instrument, and her pretty mouth puckered itself into a
round, red "O" of astonishment when Jan quickly snatched the violin
from her hands.
"Excuses-moi, ma belle Melisse," he laughed at her in French. "I am
going to play you something new!"
That same day he took the little cloth-covered roll from the violin
and gave it another hiding-place.
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